Sunday's Must-Read (Part Two): Evan's Winding Road

» Newsweek: A Perennial Press Opera (Evan Thomas)

A mixed reaction to this read ... there's some elements where I think Thomas nails it and others where he's so factually challenged that it's impossible to grant him that. Still, it warrants a reading and covers as much about the media reaction to Bill Clinton's administration as it does Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Nonetheless, the bad blood between the Clintonistas and the media has less to do with any personal failings of the Clintons themselves--or the foibles of individual reporters and editors--than it does with a poisonous, and predictable, dynamic between the press and presidents that goes back at least a half century. It's a good guess that the current media darlings, Obama and John McCain, will experience the fickleness of the press before too long.

So, short version here is that the reason the media has had it in for the Clintons is that they were in the White House. Simple, but only half the story. It completely misses the half that encompasses Jeff Gerth. Or the part that wrote critically of him during the 1992 campaign.

Worse yet is this:

Whitewater, a tangled financial scandal, broke in the winter of 1994, and the Clintons descended into the bunker for good.

Huh? 1994? Really?

Also worth noting is this excerpt:

Former presidential adviser Dick Morris (now a ferocious critic of the couple) tells NEWSWEEK the Clintons talked about why they were getting such bad press, and Hillary speculated that certain journalists were jealous of the Clintons' success. "They are all our age," said Hillary, according to Morris. President Clinton zeroed in on Howell Raines, an Alabama native and New York Times editorial page editor who was roasting the president daily. "He had to leave the South to make good and I never had to," Morris says Clinton said. Morris also says that when Gen. Colin Powell began flirting with a presidential run in the summer of 1995, Clinton warned that the press would not ask tough questions of a black man. "Bill would be furious that the media was giving him a free pass," says Morris. "Consider the source," says Carson.

That was always the inhouse logic ... that there was some element of jealousy involved. I was never quite convinced that it was for the reasons Bill put forth, however. It's hard to explain Gary Hart and now, Barack Obama, in light of that argument.